1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the art of cooking appliances and, more particularly, to a system for automatically controlling the illumination of a viewable cooking cavity of an appliance.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
When cooking food in an oven cavity, such as in a typical electric range, it is sometimes desirable to view the food during intervals of the cooking operation. However, prematurely opening the oven cavity can result in the loss of a fair amount of heat. When the cooking operation has to be resumed, an additional amount of energy is needed to simply get the cavity back to the pre-opened temperature. Therefore, the opening of the cavity represents a cost to the consumer and an undesirable energy loss.
To a certain extent, this problem has been addressed in the art of cooking appliances by providing a window area in the door used to access the oven cavity of the cooking appliance. With such an arrangement, the food products being cooked can be viewed through the window without having to open the door. This feature has been generally coupled with the inclusion of a light within the oven cavity to enhance the viewing of the food. Typically, a manual switch is provided to enable the light to be selectively utilized when needed.
In various types of known appliances, it is common to time an oven cooking operation, either directly by a timer provided on the appliance or through another source. Even when the oven has an associated window and light arrangement, an oven door will, almost invariably, still be opened when the cooking timer expires. However, cooking times inherently vary with the particular food product being cooked. Therefore, although the established cooking time may have elapsed, additional cooking may still be needed.
Based on the above, it would be beneficial to use the window and light to view the food item(s) being cooked to assure additional cooking time is not needed prior to opening the door, even though the established cooking time may have expired. Unfortunately, based on instinct, habit or otherwise, the cavity door is generally opened after the established cooking time has been reached. In order to avoid the unnecessary opening of the oven door, it would be desirable to provide a system which would draw the attention of a consumer to the viewing of the food product(s) prior to opening the oven door in order to verify that the cooking operation is, in fact, completed. In addition, it would be beneficial to provide a control system which would function to automatically turn off the oven light following activation thereof, either through a conventional manual switch or the automatic activation system of the present invention, after the oven door is opened and closed.